


psychrophilic

by braigwen_s



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Autistic Havelock Vetinari, Developing Friendships, Gen, Romantic Subtext if So Desired To Be Read, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:55:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28374270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/braigwen_s/pseuds/braigwen_s
Summary: Psychrophilic: thriving in cold.To be deliberately annoying, Vimes said “Is this your way of saying you’d like to be my friend?”
Relationships: Havelock Vetinari & Samuel Vimes
Comments: 8
Kudos: 39





	psychrophilic

It was a cold, wintry day, enough that snow-clouds were gathering with the promise of dark-brown slop by maybe this time tomorrow, but just be patient and don’t demand it. It had already snowed three nights running, or at the very least crawling. Vimes ducked his head down against the wind, wishing he could pull his neck down into his breastplate like a tortoise and grumbling under his breath about the bloody Patrician and his bloody meeting therewith.

He stomped his way into the Palace, the guards recognising him, and up the stairs into the waiting room outside the Patrician’s office. He was nearly half a minute before his formal meeting time, according to that accursed, arrhythmic clock doing its _tick.. tick…. tocktick_ in front of him. He ran through what had been happening in his mind: Carrot and Angua were working through a murder, Detritus was a few days from uncovering the leader of a group of slag-runners, and apart from the usual problems with trainees and new recruits (tried taking a bribe, doesn’t know which way to point the crossbow, attempted to cross Angua when it was near her time of month) all was as well as it could get in Ankh-Morpork. As in, eleven o’clock and all was well – the clock chimed, all of its chimes somehow at different pitches, and Vimes tried not to stamp his feet and cupped his hands to breathe into them, wondering how long Vetinari would keep him waiting.

To his surprise, relief, and not-so-mild trepidation, it had been less than a minute when the Patrician’s voice called “Do come in”. He fumbled to take his helmet off, cursing his cold-numbed fingers, and tramped his way into the office, closing the door behind him. Vetinari was at his desk, and watching him. “Ah, Vimes,” he said.

“Sir.”

“Vimes, do me a favour?”

“Sir. Depends what it is, sir.”

“Add some more coal to the fire.”

Vimes brought his tone past neutral, past accusatory, and carefully into something that could be described as ‘curious’. “Why did you only have the one lump?”

Vetinari’s face was entirely neutral, which amused Vimes a little, in a frustrating ‘shoe on the other foot’ sort of manner. If Vimes had gone to school for more than a few months as a kid, he would have described the feeling as the one a teacher gets when they get to annoy their students for a change. “Intimidating Boggis, if you must know.”

Vimes was pretty sure Boggis should be intimidated by Vetinari no matter what. Then again, Vimes was also known to intimidate the City’s nobs with a singular lump of coal… although, admittedly, by enduring the heat rather than cold. But Vetinari was a cold sort of person, calm and calculating, where Vimes was hot and angry and ran on impulse and adrenaline. It just figured they’d choose things that way. Also, Boggis would get out of Vetinari’s office sooner if he were freezing his tits off, so to speak. That may have been the real reason behind it, rather than intimidation. That did make sense. When it came to ‘annoying to listen to,’ Boggis was barely below broken kazoos. Well, for Vimes, at least. Vetinari almost certainly hated the latter far more than Vimes did.

“Ah,” said Vimes. He found a pail of coal neatly hidden behind the fireplace on Vetinari’s side of the room. He could have easily just tipped it all in, but instead he crouched, hissing at the popping of his joints as he did so, and carefully built up a fire with all the expertise of a man whose wife nursemaided sick dragons. He watched each coal flicker its way from grey to red, then to orange, and only stood back up when the flames were steadily dancing. Then, he shifted back to his usual position in front of the Patrician’s desk, his face neutral, staring past him onto the wall.

Out of the corners of his eyes, he saw Vetinari turn his body just a tiny bit closer to the fire. “Thank you, Vimes,” he said. He didn’t sound demeaning in the slightest. Vimes almost asked him if he were alright, this was so unusually vulnerable coming from him. Then he realised that it’d be stranger if he didn’t make a comment, and it would come across as being nicely rude and insubordinate, so he did ask.

“Are you feeling alright, sir?” He did say it sardonically, a sort of drawling ‘what are you being nice for’ sentiment clear in his voice.

This did the trick; Vetinari slid back into his cool and disapproving mask. Vimes felt a bit disappointed, and really didn’t like the sensation of that feeling or the fact that he had it. “I am quite well, thank you Vimes,” he said, shaking his sleeves over his hands and locating a piece of paper that presumably held detailed and lurid complaints about the Watch from Concerned Citizens.

“You didn’t answer my question,” said Vimes, a copper for more than thirty years, knowing a lazy dodge when he saw one. It was Vetinari, so it would have to have been deliberate. Which meant he wanted Vimes to keep asking. He was enjoying Vimes’ concern. Of course he was; didn’t he just milk it whenever he got the chance to play the damsel in distress to Vimes’ knight in dented armour?

“How astute,” said Vetinari, reaching for a quill pen, a sleek swan feather that had been dyed black, and dipping it delicately in the inkwell. Then, rather less delicately, he used the tip of the quill to saw his way through the ice that had formed on the top of the ink.

“Are you going to read what’s on that paper,” prompted Vimes, “or are you going to talk about your feelings? Sir.”

To what should really not have been his surprise, Vetinari’s reply was “I see no reason both cannot be accomplished.”

“Hah,” said Vimes, “alright.” He sat down in front of Vetinari, an evening of the playing field. “Go on, then,” he said, a bit more gently than he could’ve.

“I find cool weather preferable to warm,” said Vetinari, conversationally, having set his quill back down, picked up a minuscule, serrated knife, and begun sawing the ice with that instead. “Look out of the window; what do you see?”

Vimes only bothered with a brief glance. He knew what his answer was supposed to be. “All of the piss covered in snow,” he said. Vetinari’s hand flickered to his mouth, then away again.

“You have a gift for oration,” he said.

Vimes snorted, a little bit, instead of saying ‘Sir’ like he should have.

“I do mean this sincerely,” Vetinari continued. “You cut into things plainly, rather than spending half an hour fussing about and playing rat and mouse.”

The idiom was ‘cat and mouse,’ but Vimes didn’t quite have the heart to point that out. He was doing that deliberately as well, damn him, making himself vulnerable and… and… endearing! Endearing, for all the gods! Vimes was trying very hard to be angry. He should’ve been angry about it; it was just more manipulation. Right?

“I find the snowfall,” the man went on, “provides an opportunity for planning on ‘clean slates,’” – he said it with those little speech marks in it, which was another thing he did with idioms, – “although, admittedly, only for a brief span of time.”

So this was going to be another reform of the Watch, then, was it? Another update to keep it at the forefront of civil progress, or whatever words Carrot put into the Patrician’s head and then encouraged. To be deliberately annoying, Vimes said “Is this your way of saying you’d like to be my friend?”

Vetinari smiled at him. He actually _smiled_. Something _had_ to be wrong, this was _not normal_ –

“As I mentioned moments ago, you cut into things plainly.” He had gotten another little weapon out of somewhere, and was now using it on the inkwell with the knife in his other hand, like they were miniature cutlery and he was at a goblin tea.

“Here,” grunted Vimes, and Vetinari moved his hands back as Vimes picked the inkwell up and slammed it back down into the desk, cracking the ice. He looked down at it, unimpressed by the sluggish ink crawling its way through its now-shattered surface, and noticed patterns in it, sort of like how crystals were shaped.


End file.
